Intel Rally Drives Flows Into Direxion 2x INTC ETF

Intel’s stock rose 443.9% over the past year and 149.11% in the last 90 days, according to market data. That price run has coincided with increased trading in the Direxion Daily INTC Bull 2X ETF (LINT), a single-stock leveraged ETF tied to Intel.

LINT seeks to deliver 200% of Intel’s daily performance and is used by traders seeking amplified exposure to short-term moves. Leveraged ETFs reset daily, so holding LINT across multiple sessions can produce outcomes that diverge from twice the long-term return of Intel shares.

Analysts and market participants link part of Intel’s price recovery to rising demand for server central processing units (CPUs) connected to artificial intelligence projects. GPUs have driven much of AI hardware spending, but agentic AI-software that plans tasks, makes decisions and coordinates workflows-has increased emphasis on CPUs that handle a variety of tasks and system orchestration.

Morningstar analyst Ananya Chang described Intel’s turnaround as “an AI story” and noted the company does not yet have a meaningful AI GPU business comparable to Nvidia while renewed demand for server CPUs has altered investor expectations.

Morningstar’s Brian Colello observed that GPUs and CPUs are “working side by side” and said shifts in supplier choices by large cloud providers could change demand for Intel and other incumbents. This week Nvidia introduced Vera, a CPU aimed at agentic AI workloads, adding a new competitor in the CPU space.

Some market participants point to partial U.S. government ownership of Intel as a factor referenced by investors. Analysts also note ongoing competition from AMD and emerging, purpose-built chips for data centers as variables that could affect future CPU demand.